by Tony Healey
“We meet again,” Sepix said with obvious relish. He looked dishevelled but very much alive.
“Your highness. What a pleasure. I thought you were dead,” King said.
“Reports of my demise were greatly exaggerated, to say the least,” Sepix said.
“I can see that,” King said. “Although the ship looks a little different this time around …”
Sepix made a show of looking around. “She is a little worse for wear following our previous encounter, Captain. But otherwise none the weaker. And now, allow me to introduce a long, lost hero of the Dominion. You may know him from your history books!”
He stepped to the side to allow the newcomer to the conversation. The sleek form appeared beside him, his face nothing but a curve of mirrored armour. Of course Jessica remembered who this figure was. The most famous adversary of the Union and a renowned warlord of the Draxx Dominion. No one had ever seen the face behind that mirror mask.
Jessica heard Nowlan gasp next to her at the sight of him.
“General Carn,” Sepix said with a smile.
The General nodded slowly. “Deactivate your defences. You are now the prisoners of the Draxx Dominion. Prepare to be boarded. Failure to comply would be futile.”
The line was cut. The viewscreen changed back to show the enemy vessel.
King looked from Captain Nowlan to Commander Greene.
“What do we do?” Greene asked. “We’ve only just got this tub back together.”
Jessica nodded. Her jaw tightened.
“What choice do we have?” she said. She stood up, resolute. “All hands … battle stations!”
4.
Hawk shook his head. “He wasn’t there. When I came through he wasn’t there.”
“That doesn’t matter now. He’s here. Let’s deal,” King said. “The Inflictor isn’t shooting yet, but it will be. They’re only gonna give us a small window of time before they start pushing so we’ve got to come up with something now.”
“If we head further into the nebula, I’ve detected a dense asteroid field. We could use that to our advantage to evade them,” Chang offered.
“Good,” King said. “Our smaller size could work to our advantage. Give Banks the helm, the coordinates ready to go. Commander, what do you think?”
Greene crossed his arms. “That’s a good starting point for our defensive, but what about the offensive? We can’t keep taking punches without landing a few ourselves …”
“He’s right. Y’all gotta have a plan of attack,” Hawk said.
“Any suggestions, Captain?” King asked him. She glanced at the viewscreen. The Inflictor was getting closer and closer.
Hawk bit his lip as he thought for a moment. “I don’t know what yuh got in terms of fighters, but we’d never hold our own against a ship that size. Sounds crazy but we could take the fight to them. Get on board and set some explosives. Might be tricky, but -“
“It’s all we’ve got,” Jessica said.
“Captain, they have power but their energy shields are still out,” Chang said.
Jessica nodded. “Good. It’s the bit of luck we’ve been waiting for. Captain Nowlan, will you lead a team to that thing?”
Hawk threw a lopsided grin. “‘Course.”
“Commander, I’d like you to go with him. Assemble a strike team.”
“Aye,” Greene said.
“Ensign Boi, please notify Munitions we’ll be borrowing a nuke,” King said.
There was an intake of breath from those present on the bridge.
“A nuke? You’re not pulling any punches are you?” Greene said.
She shook her head. “If we only get to deliver one punch, it’d better be the hardest we’ve got.”
“Then I’m going to need someone from Munitions to help me set it,” Greene said.
“Well, get down there now and grab someone. Captain Nowlan, you’ll find the transports in hangar two. Weapons and armour in the storage lockers outside. Master at Arms will sort you out.”
Hawk nodded and was already on his way off the bridge when Greene turned to Jessica and said “You know the real nuke expert in Munitions is Swogger, right?”
Jessica levelled at him. “I’m well aware. Get a move on, Commander.”
Greene turned around with a sigh then sprinted off the bridge.
“Coordinates locked into helm, Captain,” Chang reported.
Jessica watched Lieutenant Banks arrive on the bridge to relieve the trainee of the helm console. She was silently thankful for his swift takeover of the ship’s controls.
“Full power to hull plating and engines. We have to time this just right,” she said. “Mr. Banks, be ready to initiate the run to the debris field on my word.”
5.
The Master at Arms aboard Defiant was a portly gentleman by the name of Clifford Eisenhower. Although he’d worked on dozens of ships throughout his decades of service, Defiant was his longest tour of duty on a single boat. At the age of sixty-six, he’d hoped to make it his last before a comfortable retirement.
He waited for Hawk outside the hangar bay. There was a room there lined with suits and helmets, and at the end lockers filled with weapons for which only Eisenhower and the Commanding Officers had clearance.
Hawk shook his head.
“This way, Mr. Hawk,” Eisenhower said formally. He waddled to the lockers and Hawk followed behind. He looked about at the suits; so different from his own time. Neater, lighter, more mobile.
Whenever he had a moment of forgetfulness, he had only to take in his surroundings to be reminded of how out of place he really was. It was going to take a long time for him to grow acclimated to being on the Defiant. To existing in the future, so to speak.
He watched Eisenhower place his palm against the wall next to the lockers, and an instant later they all popped open.
“Wow,” Hawk said of the weaponry on show.
Eisenhower ran him through it. “All this’ll be a crash course, for you at least Mr. Hawk.”
He handed him a small firearm. Hawk turned it over.
“Oberon? Still making them, huh?”
Eisenhower’s bushy white eyebrows rose. “Haven’t they always? That there is a Oberon Rimfire. Latest model.”
Hawk said he’d take it. Eisenhower handed him a hip holster.
“That should do you,” he said.
As Hawk fastened the holster and slipped the hand cannon into the side, he couldn’t help but smirk. “Just like the old musketeering days …”
Eisenhower nodded with a lop-sided grin. “Will you need a rifle? I’ll be kitting the others in standard issue. Rifles, firearms, grenades, etc.”
Hawk shook his head. He turned to the side a little, patted the kataan on his other hip. “Nope. I got my best weapon right here.”
Now Eisenhower seemed to change. His face lit up as he looked at it.
“Well I’ll be …” he said with a smile. “You know, I remember reading about your kataan. They were standard issue for a short time, weren’t they?”
“Yuh, for some of us.”
Eisenhower shook his head in disbelief. “Well, I must say I’m impressed. The whole thing extends from that little handle doesn’t it?”
“Yuh. Although this isn’t the standard issue model. I had this one made,” Hawk said.
Eisenhower whistled, turned to the lockers and grabbed enough weaponry to start a small scale war. “I was a teenager when you went missing,” he explained as he gathered the items together.
“Is that so?” Hawk said awkwardly.
“Makes a man feel very old, lemme tell you,” Eisenhower said.
As Hawk took some of the weaponry from him to carry into the hangar, he said “Yuh pal, I think I know what y’all mean.”
* * *
“So, let’s run through this again,” Hawk said as the three members of the tactical team - Hunter, Kaminsky and White - helped him load the transport with everything they needed.
“Yes sir,” K
aminsky said.
“We get over there, and head toward the nearest energy signature. If we go for the biggest one nearest us, we should hit one of their reactors. And we should only have to hit one of them to bring that sucker down.”
“What sort of explosives are we using for this mission?” White asked him.
“A nuke. Commander Greene’s fixing it up right now. Should be down here with it in a minute,” Hawk said.
“Timer?” White asked.
Hawk nodded. “Yuh. We’ll give ourselves just enough time to get back to the transport and make our escape. It’ll be a narrow margin of error, though. If the slightest thing goes wrong -“
Kaminsky held up a hand. He looked to the others then back at Hawk. “We know the risks, sir. Whatever happens.”
A surge of pride crackled against his heart. Since coming on board, Hawk had noticed several differences to this Union fleet and the fleet of his own time. Things were more relaxed. More … informal. The emphasis was more on a family atmosphere than a strictly professional one. And in a way, he liked it. But he also missed the old formalities in a way he couldn’t quite understand.
I’m just an old dog, he thought to himself.
But the way his team acted, their sense of duty was a bridge across the temporal divide between them. Beneath all his bravado, that was how he felt.
Hawk handed them their guns. “Whatever happens,” he said.
6.
Commander Greene found Swogger on his hands and knees beneath a dismantled console. He didn’t have time to fully appreciate the improvement in Munitions since he’d last been down there, when it was a burned out mess.
Swogger peered up at him as he approached.
“Commander,” he said formally.
Greene looked about. They were alone.
“Doing a bit of surgery, Lieutenant?” Greene asked. He rubbed his jaw, winced at the flash of pain it produced.
Swogger looked down at the mess of cables and circuit boards on the floor.
“That’s one way of looking at it,” he said.
“Listen,” Greene said. “We have a situation.”
Swogger got up, dusted off his knees. “I heard. Something about you wanting a nuke? I didn’t have time to reconfigure this station so I was doing a quick reroute until it’s all over -“
“Swogger listen to me,” Green broke in. “The Captain wants us to go over there and plant the nuke from the inside.”
Swogger nodded slowly as Greene continued.
“Since you’re the real expert around here on nukes, we need you to come across to assist with setting it,” Greene said.
“Are you asking me, Commander?”
Greene blew the air out of his mouth in frustration. “I’m giving you the choice. I’m sure we can take somebody else. But you’re the one with the know-how. And you have to know it’s gonna be a hairy one, going over there and doing this. We might not come back.”
Swogger considered for a second. It seemed to stretch out for whole long minutes, an interminable amount of time.
“You know, when the Captain came down to the cells, we spoke about choices. I realised I was wrong to blame everything on hers. She was just trying to keep us alive,” Swogger said.
“So …” Greene asked, unsure where Swogger was going with it.
“I’m saying I’ll do it. Because I have the power of choice this time around, and hopefully I’m making the right one.”
Greene managed a brief grin before his jaw played him up again. He slapped Swogger on the arm. “Good stuff. Now we don’t have much time. Let’s get ourselves a nuke.”
7.
“Captain, the Draxx ship is hailing,” Ensign Boi reported.
King sighed. We still need more time.
“Open a channel,” she ordered.
The viewscreen changed once again to show Prince Sepix, but General Carn was now absent from his side.
“At last you choose to answer, Captain,” Sepix said.
“I have been in conference with my crew,” she said.
Sepix opened his arms with a flourish. “And?”
Jessica took a deep breath. “We have decided to stand down and surrender.”
The bridge crew all turned to look at her, shocked to hear the words although they were aware of the plan in place.
“Excellent,” Sepix said with obvious relish. “It would be unfortunate to have to blow you out of the sky. I look forward to having you as my guest aboard the Inflictor, Captain.”
Yes, so you can interrogate and torture me until I die, Jessica thought.
“I’d like some time to prepare my crew, if I may,” she said.
Sepix bowed his head slightly. “You may.”
“And, I wish to deliver our surrender in person. As is our custom,” she said.
Sepix cocked his head to one side. “That would be most … agreeable. Most agreeable indeed.”
King felt the hatred for her Draxx counterpart bubble away inside.
“Thank you,” she said convincingly enough.
“The pleasure is mine,” Sepix said. “You have thirty minutes, human. And then if you don’t come to us, we’ll come to you …”
The viewscreen changed abruptly to the view of the Inflictor floating before them.
“The clock is ticking,” King said.
8.
“I’m sorry about that jaw,” Swogger said. He had the back end of the nuke in his hands, and Greene carried the top end walking backwards. The Commander glared at him.
“Shut up,” Greene snapped.
The nuke was heavy, and there was no time to get something to transport it on so they’d had no choice but to handball it all the way to the hangar bay.
“Sorry,” Swogger said.
“Anyway,” Greene said. “You got lucky with that hit.”
Swogger looked up at him, then started to laugh. Greene couldn’t help himself from joining in.
The overhead comm. system crackled to life.
“Commander, this is the Captain. We’ve got fourteen minutes to get over there. You better shake your tail feather and get a move on before they suspect something.”
Greene rolled his eyes at the ceiling as they carried the nuke through the entrance of the hangar bay, both panting from the struggle.
“She doesn’t realise how much this weighs …” he said.
* * *
Nowlan waited by the side of the transport as Kaminsky, Hunter and White filed on board. They each carried the armour and weapons they needed.
“Take yuh time boys,” he said as he watched Greene and Swogger working up a sweat to lug the nuke through the hangar bay toward the ship. They both glared at him. “Hope y’all aren’t gonna be too tired for the big show now yuh done that.”
“We’ll … be … fine …” Greene said. He settled the nuke on the floor and flopped back against the transport. Swogger stood with his hands against the small of his back.
“Really?” Hawk asked them. He looked from one to the other. “I just don’t get it boys, why didn’t yuh use one of those?”
They both followed his line of sight to an anti-grav platform a few feet away.
Hawk shrugged. “Well, come on then. Time’s wastin’.” He walked over to the anti-grav, and pushed it toward them. “Better get it on here, boys. We don’t wanna be luggin’ this thing inside that ship. Not at your speed. I’ll meet you inside.”
He patted them both on the back and walked up the ramp of the transport.
Greene went to say something.
Swogger shook his head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Commander. Come on.”
* * *
“Time,” King said.
Chang glanced at her readout. “Five minutes.”
King shook her head. Too close. They’re cutting this too close.
“As soon as the transport is within one hundred metres of their hangar, open fire. Aim directly for the bridge. Knock out their control of the situation if we can,�
�� she ordered.
Olivia Rayne had the weapons station. “I have the main guns locked on target, Captain. As soon as you’re ready, we’ll unleash everything we’ve got.”
Jessica nodded with satisfaction. “Excellent. We need to get our punches in fast, hit them before they know what we’re doing. And when they do, we’ll be on our way.”
* * *
The emergency lights flashed on and off as the hangar bay doors slowly opened to the cold vacuum of space.
“Got your suits on, fellas?” Hawk asked them as the ramp to the transport slid shut behind them.
“All but the helmets,” Swogger said. They’d slip them on at the last minute.
“You did bring all the weapons, didn’t you?” Greene asked Nowlan.
Hawk nodded. “Yessir. Everything you need.”
“And what about you?”
“I sorted myself out, pal,” Hawk said with a chuckle.
The legendary star pilot keyed the controls and brought the transport to a smooth hover above the hangar bay deck.
“I may be a little out of date, but I still got the goods,” he said.
“Just don’t do anything fancy. We’re meant to be flying over there to surrender, not show how many loops you can execute in less than sixty seconds,” Greene remarked.
Hawk turned to look at him. “Commander, you’re talking to the Galaxy’s best here. Just sit back and hang tight, will yuh? Nobody likes a goddamn backseat driver.”
With a shake of his head, Hawk moved the craft forward. They edged out through the hangar bay doors, and he brought them smoothly alongside the Defiant.
The transport moved so slowly, it was almost as though they were flying an inspection of the outer hull before a shakedown. Whilst Hawk took them across the Defiant’s bow, Hunter, Kaminsky and White double-checked the weapons and ammo. They handed armour and side-arms to Greene and Swogger.
“You okay?” Greene asked him.
Swogger looked up at the instant he jammed a clip into his pistol. It contained enough charge for eighteen hours of constant fire. “Don’t worry about me, Commander. I know what you want me to do.”
